[The purpose of working in Bloomington IN during the year 1979-1980 was to fund a trip to China. True, we would get only as far as San Francisco the next summer, but we didn’t know that yet. J. was Assistant Slavic Department Chair for an administrator unwilling to execute the administrative duties of an administrator, and I was Coordinator of the (first and only, as far as I know) Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics. I swear, if there had been anything other than an old typewriter upstairs in the university's Institute of Semiotic Studies, where I kept busy writing whatever came to mind in between compiling entries for the encyclopedia, fighting off the grotesque demands of the institute director, and corresponding with the internationally scattered potential authors and distinguished board of directors—which included Umberto Eco, God rest his semiotic soul, before he wrote his famous novels—I would have written in/on that. Even right here as a rhaps, had it been available to me. For some reason all the photos I took in January 1979, the month spent in Greece, were lost. This poem remained. The Didion-Dostoevsky-Kafka piece was born of a lonely brain imagining friends, even if they didn’t like me. Smoothies came from my delight in having met a Soulmate. The computer art is from 2014, though the sketches came earlier.]
The Virgin
she stands white and glowing
flowing through the wind and rocks
impenetrable
astro traveller
caught by her shapeless invisibility
her negation of desire
her black hole
her unnerving absence of energy
her deathlike smile
the smile of an arrogant rose
blown to bits by the cold spears
whirling around her
smiling allknowing
unknowing
the union of all opposites
the cancellation of existence
in that
Greek stone smile
that Reims angel smile
was she born a virgin?
pink and sprawling
crawling out
from Woman
she was already ashamed
she waited
she was painted blue and red
until the centuries wore her white and classic
until her eyes were
marble smooth
and clear
until her smile was
frozen
on her face
Athens, 1979
Apocalypse (in the morning)
Joan Didion sits on a low bench in the corner of the room. It’s dark and at first I don’t see the figure sitting next to her. He is the Man from the Underground. They are quietly chatting and don’t appear to notice me. I walk up and sit next to them. Didion is talking about her abortion in low mumbling tones and the Underground Man is slowly nodding his head, then shaking it, then nodding again. At one point he gets up and walks to the other side of the room, looks at the door, then shrugs his shoulders and comes back. This is when he sees me. I don’t like you, he says. Fine, fine, I answer. Then he sits down again. Didion starts to cry. Shut the fuck up, I say to her.
There’s a huge explosion and the walls shake and the door slams shut. We look at each other and then all, as if on cue, shut our eyes. Later there is smoke in the room and an odd odor. The Underground Man jumps up and starts shrieking “I don’t believe it—we survived it! Of all the people on this planet!”
“Cockroaches,” I say.
“Of course, cockroaches. That was the whole point!”
Didion starts to giggle. She says she’s pregnant.
“More cockroaches.”
“We’ll call him Franz.”
“Got a cigarette?”
I light the cigarette. The entire room glows orange for a long instant. We three glisten like black deep sea divers, our eyes bright white and hollow.
Bloomington, IN, 1980
Smoothies
things
should go smoothly
they should slide
melt, merge, connect
the next phrase rising
as the handshake loosens
a throaty little chuckle
cuts the eye gaze short
but there are thousands
millions of us
sprinkled out throughout
the smoothies
hiding, peering out
from funny corners
who never learned the
art of sliding
smoothly through exchanges
every word is loud and clammy
every look recorded clearly
memories are piled
remembered
layered thoughts
poke through the surface
of our pockmarked veneer
we swallow hard
we fidget fingers
we smirk and smudge
our faces silly
the smoothies slide
around us
and continue
with finesse
while we bump
and blush
into each other—
hey!
you one too?
I bet I could be
smooth too
with you.
Bloomington, IN, 1980
19 OCTOBER 2018